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News 2022
Jellyfish-inspired garden at Blarney Castle and Gardens
Jellyfish Fantastic, a Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) funded project led by Dr Tom Doyle, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, recently developed a jellyfish-inspired garden at Blarney Castle and Gardens. The initiative was a collaboration with botanical artist Shevaun Doherty and Adam Whitbourn, head gardener and designer at Blarney Castle and Gardens.
The aim of the garden was to ‘take jellyfish out of the sea’ and place them in a very different environment, a garden, where they could be compared with plants and flowers so that the viewer sees them in a different and positive light, rather than just fear them.
The garden was framed by six 2 metre tall artworks and a kreisel aquarium with live moon jellyfish. A jellyfish inspired rock garden was placed in front of the artwork and aquarium with plants specifically chosen because their shapes, colours and symmetry are similar to jellyfish. Some plants looked like seaweeds and other plants were suspended from the roof to mimic jellyfish tentacles. The project was funded by the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Discover Programme.
Meet the team
Shevaun Doherty is a Botanical and Natural History Artist. Shevaun regularly exhibits in Ireland and abroad, and has won many awards for her work (Gold and Best in Show in Bloom Festival 2022). Shevaun also teaches to share her enthusiasm for nature and art. She runs a very successful online art course ‘Botanical Elements’ and art workshops around the country and abroad. One of her proudest achievements to date has been to design a set of Irish postage stamps featuring native Irish bees.
Adam Whitbourn is Head Gardener and Designer with Blarney Castle & Gardens. Adam has worded at the castle and Gardens for 15 years and designed and built the Poison Garden in 2014 which is one of the most visited spaces in the castle gardens. Adam has also designed and built a pop up garden for the Bloom garden festival in Dublin to showcase Blarney Castle.
Dr Tom Doyle is a marine biologist and lecturer in zoology at University College Cork. Tom’s research focuses on investigating the ecological role of jellyfish in our seas, socio-economic impacts of jellyfish (e.g. aquaculture and fisheries interactions), First Aid for treatment of jellyfish stings and diet and trophic interactions of jellyfish. Tom also works on animal biotelemetry where he uses satellite and acoustic tags to track the movements of sharks and rays, and even jellyfish.